How to Upgrade Firmware for CX-01 mini PC

[WARNING: Although these instructions worked with my hardware (CX-01 bought via Pandawill), it appears to break some CX-01 devices (See comments section), so use these instructions with care]

Pandawill finally managed to release CX-01 firmware (234 MB) about a week ago. This firmware can be used for devices with 4 or 8 GB flash memory (2 separate directories). You only need to update the firmware if your device has some serious problems, or if CX-01 gets a proper firmware update (we can always dream…).

Now click on FWDN_V7_v2.22.exe, click on …, and select one of the 3 files in V1.0-4096-8189_en then click on add file. Repeat until you’ve added the 3 files for the 4GB firmware:

CX1-V1.0-4096-8189_en.rom – MTD

lk.rom – BOOT

NAND Data.fai – NAND Data

Now connect the mini USB to USB cable to your computer (but not to the CX-01 just yet), press the Fn key and insert the mini USB cable into the CX-01, until it is detected by Windows and complete the driver installation. Once this is done, the Area Map section you show the NAND Data and MTD partitions. Click on the Start button to start flashing the new firmware to the device.

FWDN V7 During CX-01 Firmware Flashing

Once you see “Download is complete! (1st)” the update is complete. This is the log for the update:============================================
FWDN V7 -- v2.22
============================================

I bought 15 of the android 4.0.4 tcc8925 aliexpress to sell on eBay. Fixed theplaystore problem, but all games stop. Will this firmware help if I re-flash.
Also noticed a typo
V1.0-4096-8189_en – Directory for 4GB firmware
V1.0-8192-8189_en – Directory for 4GB (8GB??) firmware

@Miranda
I’m not sure as I’ve never had problems with the play store using the original firmware. I don’t usually play games on Android mini-PC as the games I prefer require a G-sensor. Which games did you try?

As you probably guessed I am an android noob so forgive me if I come across like a bit of an idiot…learning on the job. The playstore would stop after every download, upgraded the binary that worked. Gave to my son, he is 10 likes games like bakery story and nightclub story. Both of which stop. Dunno how to debug. Any ideas. Might do a vid later to show prob.
Miranda

@Miranda
I’ve tried Nightly club story and it can run, although not especially smoothly.
If your son can play the game for a while, and suddenly it appears as if it hanged, it’s probably because of the 100% CPU usage bug. If it just stops and goes back to the home screen, it might be a memory usage issue, as the game does not appear to be really lightweight. One way to mitigate this memory issue, could be to run Advanced Task Killer to kill all other tasks before running this game.

@cnxsoft
Didn’t buy from Pandawill but had previously rooted it and installed Tatubius’ tweak via windows xp without difficulty. Interestingly when I tried to reflash with original firmware it tells me the NAND Data files sizes are different, records an error and stops download.

@arun
I don’t recommend it, you may brick your device and there is probably very little improvement over the version you have. If you want to upgrade anyway, do NOT load lk.rom, and make sure you backup your system partition. If you don’t know how to do those steps, then don’t do it, you’re likely to render your Z900 unusable.

Zero Devices should really provide a firmware update, since they promote themselves as a brand, and as such should have better customer support than other noname manufacturers.